


Love Languages

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, grief and mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25010446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Grizzop knows a few ways to cheer people up.
Relationships: Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Zolf Smith, Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 18
Kudos: 56





	Love Languages

Zolf is aware he’s not the most cheerful person but he has gotten better over the past year. At least, he tells himself that. Oscar does sometimes too, late at night, when they’re wrapped around each other. “You’ve gotten better, you know.”

“You don’t need to lie about it,” Zolf replies, burying his head in Oscar’s chest as Oscar laughs, peppering kisses all over the top of his head.

“Maybe you don’t need to,” he says finally, one warm hand curled gently over the back of his neck.

He broods. He knows he does it. Sometimes he’ll force himself out of it but sometimes things pile up and crowd out the good thoughts and he can’t do anything except try to get out - away - to the sea if he can manage it, just outside and away from the walls pressing in. It doesn’t matter if it's the most airy and open room in the most posh of houses, sometimes it feels too much like the darkness of a mine, or the damp stinking dankness of a sewer somewhere under Paris. A reminder of things and people he has lost.

Grizzop finds him there, on the cliffs near their cottage, overlooking the ocean, sitting on his favourite boulder, watching the waves. It’s cold, but the wind has the hint of warmth in it that comes with early spring, bringing with it all the other memories and burdens associated with that time of the year. 

Grizzop is a creature of the outdoors, of the woods and the hunt despite the fact that he was brought up in a city. There is always an air of the wild about him. The exact opposite to Oscar, really, with all his pretentiousness and mannered ways. 

They’re an odd trio, and enough people have remarked on it over the years. 

“Wotcher, Zolf” he says, today and Zolf lets out a sigh. “You broodin’ again?”

There is never any point in dissembling, with Grizzop. “Sure,” he says. 

“Oscar says you’ve been doing it a lot lately.”

Zolf looks at him. “Azu told me it’s a natural reaction to the time of year.”

“What, spring? I thought that was when everyone was meant to get frisky and happy. Are you just the opposite for everything then?”

Zolf chuckles, but it’s a brief thing, brittle. “Probably. But it’s not about the weather.”

Grizzop flops down on the ground next to him, spread eagled, looking up at the sky. “What’s it about then?”

Zolf envies Grizzop’s physicality sometimes - his lithe grace and ability to simply relax, let go of all tension. The ability to be in the moment so completely that nothing else matters. It makes him a formidable fighter, a force of nature on the battlefield, but it also means that when he is free - free from the hunt, the chase, the fight - he does not allow what has come before to stop him from enjoying the now.

Zolf has never been able to do that.

He considers not answering Grizzop’s question, but he rarely asks anything of Zolf, and there are things he has shared with Oscar that Grizzop has never been privy to.

“It was this time of year,” he says. “When Feryn died. When I killed him.”

Grizzop sits up again. “Oh,” he says. 

“So yeah I tend to remember him more. Remember what happened. It’s… harder to be inside and stuff.”

“Yeah. That makes sense, I guess.” Grizzop gets up. The boulder means that Zolf is only a little taller than him sitting and Grizzop reaches out to gently tug on his beard, pulling his head closer so he can plant a gentle kiss on his forehead. He pulls back. “Does this make you feel better?” he asks, indicating with his free hand the waves, the wind, the clifftop around them.

Zolf takes the hand that had tugged him in his own, pressing his lips to it and smiling lopsidedly. “Maybe,” he says. 

“I'll leave you to it then,” Grizzop says, although he brushes a thumb over Zolf’s cheekbone when Zolf releases his hand. 

Zolf’s heart feels lighter once he is gone.

Two days later he’s back on his rock to watch the sunrise, and he isn’t surprised when Grizzop comes out to join him. “Oi,” Grizzop says. “Not gonna bother you, just thought you might like this,” he fishes in his pocket, and brings out what at first glance looks like a rock, about the size of a goblin’s fist. 

Zolf raises an eyebrow as he takes it. 

“Um. Thanks?”

Grizzop shifts from foot to foot. “Have a closer look at it.”

It’s shifting the thing in his hands that makes him realise it’s not just a rock - it’s smooth to the touch, but when he moves it it splits cleanly down the middle, separating into two slightly uneven halves. Inside is a dazzling spray of purple and white crystal. It catches the morning sunlight and glitters like the horde of a long dead dragon.

“Found it in the caves down by the beach yesterday,” Grizzop is saying. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, you know what it is?”

Zolf swallows. Blinks back a sudden rush of tears, then swallows again. “It’s a geode,” he says. 

“Oh?” 

Zolf unconsciously shifts on his boulder and Grizzop clambers up to sit next to him. “What’s a geode then?”

Zolf lets out a small puff of breath. “This,” he says, but grins down at Grizzop. “Sometimes minerals will clump up? I guess? In a deposit and then the rock will form around ‘em. You break ‘em open and you find stuff like this inside. There are magical ones sometimes, but those are rare.”

"That's pretty neat," Grizzop says, and Zolf smiles softly.

"Yeah it kind of is."

He remembers finding one with Feryn, one of the only good times he had down in the mines. Remembers the soft words and gentle hands of his brother as he cracked the rock open, and explained to Zolf patiently how it had formed. Remembers that they’d kept the two halves of the geode in their room.

Remembers that he’d left it there, along with so many other things, when he’d packed his bags to leave.

His cheeks are wet and he realises he’s not spoken in a good long while. A small goblin hand finds his and clasps it. Zolf curls his fingers around it, marvelling at its strength, its dexterity, and its perfect, delicate gentleness. 

He cradles the two halves of the geode in his lap and doesn’t try to stop the tears any more.

**Author's Note:**

> A few Wilde Riders were discussing how Grizzop would deal with Zolf being sad and someone suggested that he'd probably give him a cool rock that he found, and we all agreed that if Grizzop gave US a cool rock it would deffo help. 
> 
> Then I remembered that Zolf was a miner (or going to be one) and gave myself a healthy dose of angst on top of things. Cos I'm just like that, apparently.


End file.
